


Silent War

by orphan_account



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:06:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1584404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My head canon on Helena's speech capabilities through river imagery. <br/>"Helena’s mind is a river that carries thoughts like sediment into the bank of her mouth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent War

Helena’s mind is a river that carries thoughts like sediment into the bank of her mouth.

As a child, her mind flowed fast and free, carrying words to her tongue without delay. She shoveled words into the air without care. The faintest phrases entered her ears and poured from her mouth a moment later, much to the Nuns' dismay.

Gossip in the church had been like a single drop of rain that soiled the ground and then silently reabsorbed into the atmosphere, unnoticed. But Helena collected every drop in her mind and let a monsoon of gossip pour on anyone who would listen.

When she passed her prime years of adoption, they transferred her to a different branch of the church: The Proletheans.

After months of abuse, the urgency for silence became apparent. Bricks began to condense along the threshold of her mind and her tongue. They lined across her stream of thought in a single row, the beginning of a dam. Months became years, and the dam grew.

The barrier began catching little words like “no,” or “stop.” With every month, more words would layer at the bottom of her mind in a soggy sludge. But the river remained strong and flowed over the edge of the dam like a waterfall, for a while.

By the time she was in her late twenties, the dam had sealed from top to bottom. Her mind trickled through the miniature cracks and fissures, bringing in particles of thought like, “survive,” and “sheep.”

 The stagnancy of her mind bred anger like mosquitos, and so followed violence. Without words to guide her through her emotions, she utilized her strength. Her mind diverged from her tongue and flowed into her body instead; and so, words like "hate" and "anger" were expressed with clenched fists.

Until the day she met Sarah.

At the time, she had no word for Sarah's existence, so she attached “Not” onto the small pond of words she already knew. She was “Not-Beth.” She was “Not-sheep.” She was Not like the others.

Every time Sarah opened her mouth, she gave Helena a new word that stirred waves into the lake of her mind. Her thoughts began to thrust against the barrier, expanding the miniature cracks, wanting to be used. Words she had only read of suddenly came trickling through and she used them delicately, voice trembling with excitement, "I love you." 

But progress was slow, and patience was not a word well acquainted with either of them. 

The knife plunged deep into Amelia’s side held a question at its tip that her lips refused to bear.

The bullet wedged deep in the twitching muscle of Helena's back held an emotion that could not be confronted.

Now, Helena lay in the Prolethean’s grasp once again with two holes created by Sarah. Her last words were spit in anger and disgust, but they entered Helena's mind nonetheless, and blasted through the weakened center of the barrier. 

Through the broken center, a shy stream of thought flows through. .

The individual words mingled in the stream and strung together with a thousand new meanings, waiting to be emptied out into her mouth. Waiting to be used

_I’ve already got a family_


End file.
